Dominican Republic town blames U.S. firm for birth defects

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Miami Herald

Posted on Friday, 11.06.09
Dominican Republic town blames U.S. firm for birth defects
A small Dominican Republic town plagued by birth defects wants to know if a U.S. power company is to blame.

BY FRANCES ROBLES
[e-mail]
ARROYO BARRIL, Dominican Republic -- Maximiliano Calcaño is 2 and was born with no arms.

``When I was pregnant, I was dizzy, vomiting and could barely walk,'' said Maximiliano's mother, Anajai Calcaño, 20. ``My tooth cracked and fell out. Then my baby was born like that, without arms. Nothing like that had ever happened here before.'' By ``before,'' Calcaño means before a U.S. power company's coal ash arrived at a nearby port, sitting there for more than two years.

She lives in a small wooden house with no indoor plumbing in a rural village in northern Dominican Republic, not far from where coal ash generated by Virginia-based AES Corp. wound up at the edge of the sea. More than 50,000 tons of coal ash laden with heavy metals was left at a port abutting local homes for years while the company, politicians, prosecutors, environmental activists and bureaucrats argued -- and residents got sick.

It has been six years since a contractor from Delray Beach brought the black dusty residue to the province of Samaná, and three years since the ash was cleaned up. Several civil lawsuits and criminal cases later, just when everyone thought it was over, the other shoe has dropped.

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1319257.html

[ej510]

1. This is that type of bullshit that happens in nations full of black and brown people.

I am sick of this shit. :mad: :puke:

[jwirr]

2. Hail to the devils who dump our waste products on helpless people.

:wtf:

[rebel with a cause]

3. The Samana Peninsula is especially known for two things

to me.

It was a colony formed by slaves from the USA and until recent years was one of the few places where old English was spoken, and the only place on the island where English was the main language.

Part of Semana Peninsula is leased by the USA for a Naval Base and has been for over a hundred years.

Really sorry to hear that this type of thing is happening there but knew that no good would come from the D.R.s close alliance with the U.S. over the last decade or so. There has been a history with the two countries for over four hundred years but just lately has the D.R. become such a tool for the U.S. in the Caribbean. JMHO